We knew our parts, anyway."
"I think the village will enjoy it."
"Anyway, it's never very critical, is it? And it loves a melodrama."
"Yes. I wonder if father knows you're here. He said he'd come straight
back. Perhaps I'd better go and find him."
"Oh, let me go, Miss Greene," said one of the youths ardently.
"Well, I don't know whether you'd find the place. It's a shed in the
garden that he uses. We use half as a dark-room and half as a
coal-cellar."
"I'll go--"
He stopped. A nightmare sound, as discordant as it was ear-splitting,
filled the room. Miss Greene sank back into her chair, suddenly white.
One of the young men let a cup of tea fall neatly from his fingers on
to the floor and there crash into fragments. The young lady visitor
emitted a scream that would have done credit to a factory siren. Then
at the open French window appeared a small boy holding a bugle,
purple-faced with the effort of his performance.
One of the young men was the first to recover speech. He stepped away
from the broken crockery on the floor as if to disclaim all
responsibility for it and said sternly:
"Did you make that horrible noise?"
Miss Greene began to laugh hysterically.
"Do have some tea now you've come," she said to Ginger.
Ginger remembered the pangs of hunger, of which excitement had
momentarily rendered him oblivious, and, deciding that there was no
time like the present, took a cake from the stand and began to consume
it in silence.
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